Letters to the Editor

Whether people believe in evolution or creation, bats patrol the night skies for a purpose: to eat what bugs us. This disease is a catastrophe for the bats themselves and for us.

JAIME CURTIS, via philadelphiaweekly.com

Wind Beneath Their Wings

Regarding Randy LoBasso’s story on bats and wind turbines:

Unfortunately, rather than reduce mountain-top removal, industrial wind simply adds to the devastation of our forests. Industrial wind is an energy impostor existing only to separate taxpayers from their hard-earned money. The corporations which benefit from taxpayer dollars then supply ready cash to politicians who, completing the cycle, enact legislation requiring industrial wind’s use. We should be investing in truly innovative energy technologies which can supply energy on-demand instead of diverting our ever-shrinking taxpayer dollars to prop up this failed technology.

MORGAN, via philadelphiaweekly.com

The real problem isn’t so much wind, it’s siting and scale. Massive turbines in open environments will attract bats. The solution is distributed renewable energy generation (more smaller installations) in the built environment at the point of use that prioritizes solar PV and wildlife-friendly wind turbines. Bigger is not better. The sun and wind are everywhere so let’s move away from the massive centralized energy generation model of the past century. Unfortunately, corporate big wind is entrenched and will fight doing the right thing for the environment.

CEAL SMITH, via philadelphiaweekly.com

I adore bats, all kinds of bats, especially the fruit bats—they look like gorgeous, fluffy, pointy-eared flying foxes. Bats are supremely important to our ecosystem. Without them we would be so overwrought with repulsive bugs, it would be awful. I love them, and respect them. I find it tragic wind turbines are killing them. It’s terrible, as is the basic ignorance most humans have of this great creature.

KAREN, via philadelphiaweekly.com

Corrections

In a May 23 story about local artists’ efforts to save our region’s dying bat population, we misspelled the names of two of the contributing artists. The artists are David Cook and Alan Brown. We regret the errors.